The melted wax applicators for hair removal that are currently known generally consist of a hand-holdable casing with a top opening, inside which is housed a container for depilatory wax to be applied to a user's skin in very fine films with the aid of an applicator roller, which is positioned over the mouth of the container, in the opening of the casing.
The wax container can consist of a heatable tank that is solidly joined to the casing, which must be refilled with new wax as the stored wax is applied to a user's skin. However, applicators that include this type of tanks are not very widely used, as the operation of refilling said tanks presents several problems.
Firstly, applicators of this type store and dispense warm wax, which flows when its temperature exceeds approximately 36° C., but the state of which at room temperature is too viscous to be poured from one recipient to another. For this reason, the wax must be heated before it is poured into the applicator tanks, meaning that it is necessary to have suitable heaters to heat the wax.
Secondly, the capacity of the applicator tanks is not very large, meaning that the quantity of wax that must be heated to fill the tank of a single applicator is also very small. Having to heat very small quantities of wax several times represents a significant waste of time and energy efficiency. Heating large quantities of wax to supply more than one tank at a time increases the energy efficiency of the operation, but it is only advantageous if several applicators are soon to be used for hair removal.
Thirdly, particularly during the operation of pouring the melted wax from the recipient that contains it into the applicator tanks, the wax must be handled with great care as any melted wax that spills out of the mouth of the tanks solidifies as it cools and soils the components of the applicators, such as the rotating application rollers, subsequently preventing these from functioning correctly.
For these reasons, it is more common to use applicators in which the wax is stored in single-use containers in the form of cartridges, which can be replaced by other full containers when the stored wax runs out. These cartridges allow users to replace the wax in a container once said wax has run out, changing the whole container or cartridge without soiling or coming into direct contact with the wax.
Although this system is, a priori, much cleaner than the system disclosed above, wherein the wax tanks are not replaceable and must be successively refilled with wax, it also presents certain drawbacks. These include the price of the empty containers or cartridges, which significantly affects the price of the container full of wax, the form in which it is sold. This particularly affects wax manufacturers, who have to supply the product in containers or cartridges that are suitably adapted to be inserted into the applicators.
For this purpose, the containers must be sufficiently rigid and must be capable of supporting the heat that is needed to heat the wax for the application thereof. In addition to the high cost of the containers, storing and transporting wax in small quantities in its respective containers also increases the price of the transport and storage operations per unit of wax.
Furthermore, the stored wax content of the cartridges is not totally usable, as a certain wastage of wax always remains stuck to the base and inner walls of the cartridges.
For all these reasons, it is particularly interesting to achieve an optimum procedure and system for dispensing wax in a controlled manner that are adapted for refilling the fixed tanks of the applicators cleanly and easily, which does not require the use of said replaceable containers or cartridges.
Document US 2004/0200541 discloses a wax dispenser that comprises tanks containing wax electrically heated by electrical resistances. This device is particularly designed for storing sufficient quantities of melted depilatory wax, of the hot wax type, to supply several containers for hair removal applications on more than one user.
The heat applied to the tanks is transmitted, by conduction, to the wax stored therein, so that it melts and becomes more fluid. A circuit connects a mouth in the base of the tanks to a corresponding valve element that allows the controlled dispensation of the desired quantity of melted hot wax. Although the device allows the controlled dispensation of wax, it does not solve some of the aforementioned problems. Specifically, although the device makes it possible to dispense wax stored in its tanks, it does not solve the problem of how to first put the wax into said tanks.
Moreover, the electrical resistances are positioned in such a way that they only directly heat a small portion of one of the side walls of the tanks, through which the heat is transmitted to the wax, therefore requiring a high energy consumption. The energy loss is also very high, as the resistances consume the same amount of energy regardless of the amount of wax stored in the tanks. It is obvious that when the tanks are practically empty, according to the device disclosed in US 2004/0200541 it would be necessary to provide less heat to melt the wax, which is not provided for according to the description of said document.